Microsoft-Ts on BAFM

Windows Server 2003 Terminal services

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:11:18 +0000

Well, once you thought you don’t have any more problems, another one just pops up. I’m currently bashing my head against the wall, why the hell the forwarded (or is it redirected ?) drives are not shown in the in the “My Computer” explorer view. I pretty sure have an idea why (basically, HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Classes isn’t writeable, but that’s where Windows, or rather the Terminal Services – or whatever is creating the associations), just don’t know a clever way around/by it.

Software support and key account managers

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:24:59 +0000

As Mike wrote about his experiences with hardware vendors, I’m gonna devote this here post to my favorite software company in the world. We recently bought two copies of a software called " 2X Application Server Enterprise Edition". As one would think from reading the spe cs of the software, it’s near a Citrix solution (which it is, at least for a small part); but in return it’s faaaar away concerning the price. Just so you get an idea, about what I’m meaning with " faaar":

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Windows Server 2003:
Standard Edition: 2 * 91,00
CAL: 50 * 6,00
Terminal Server CAL: 50 * 17,00
 ___________
 1.332,00

The above are fixed costs, you need them anyway as both Citrix as well as the 2X solution is only working * on top* of Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services.

Now, here’s the real comparison between 2X Application Server & Loadbalancer and Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition:

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2X 2 * 1510,00 = 3.020,00
Citrix 50 * 393,00 = 19.650,00

While 2X is licensed per terminal server, XenApp is licensed per user. As you can see from the above prices, the 2X solution is roughly 1/6 of the Citrix XenApp solution.

Getting the 2X service up and running

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:31:18 +0000

As I mentioned before, we decided against the Citrix Presentation Server solution in favour of the 2X LoadBalancer and ApplicationServer combination. You’re gonna say, but Citrix does the same and it’s only one " application frame". 2X is exactly the same.

Device CAL's ain't no Device CAL's

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:21:13 +0000

I stumbled upon a real weird problem. Apparently the terminal server licenses called " per Device" ain’t a real per device. From reading on it Microsoft states it like this:

Device-based versus User-based Terminal Server CALs

Two types of Terminal Server Client Access Licenses are available: TS Device CAL or TS User CAL.

A TS Device CAL permits one device (used by any user) to conduct Windows Sessions on any of your servers.

A TS User CAL permits one user (using any device) to conduct Windows Sessions on any of your servers.

You may choose to use a combination of TS Device CALs and TS User CALs simultaneously with the server software.

Windows terminal services undamp; network printers

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:08:05 +0000

Yes, yes. I do list a lot of crappy products (go on, laugh; I don’t really care). Yesterday I had quite a struggle with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Terminal services (or more precisely with their way on how to deal with network printers).

As most of you know, there a two (possibly three) different ways on how to do network printers.

would be, to simply share a local connected printer by simply creating a share for the printer
buy a smart printer with integrated print server
a combination of 1. and 2.

We luckily enough do have printers with integrated print servers, so that wouldn’t be a problem. But you get a problem if you’re trying to monitor the printer queue if you simply create a new TCP/IP connection from another target. You simply can’t tell who’s printing what.

Customizing Thin Clients

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:14:53 +0000

As some of you know, the company I’m currently working for, recently acquired some thin clients to replace our old computers for the students to work on. Those PC’s are like P3 800 MHz with 512MB RAM and sadly don’t run Office 2007 anymore, so we replaced them with thin clients and are streaming those applications from a Windows Terminal Server cluster (created by and with 2X Application LoadBalancer).

So far so good, getting them to display the applications ain’t hard, the real hard part starts when you want additional things from this Windows XPe (Embedded), like lets say getting them to display a German language.